The Time Carrot Top Met Jimmy Carter

Meeting famous people never gets old, says master prop comic Carrot Top. But he appears to have a special place in his heart for one such encounter, an unplanned hang with President Jimmy Carter, who passed away over the weekend at the age of 100.

The year was 1989 or 1990, Carrot Top remembered on Twitter/X, which would have been shortly before he found quasi-fame on TV shows like Star Search and Comic Strip Live. The comic had played a college show in Bozeman, Montana, and now at the airport, he had no one to help him move his humongous prop trunks. He parked his rented Jeep in the dark, early hours of the morning and hit the button to open the back hatch when another car pulled in directly behind him, blocking the path to his gear.

“What the fuck?” he thought, giving the driver a nasty look. As Carrot Top’s eyes adjusted in the dim light, he made out the car’s passenger. “That’s Jimmy Carter.” The driver? Georgia-based mogul Ted Turner. “Naturally, he’s an asshole, he came up too close.” The passengers got out of the car — the former President, his better half Rosalynn Carter and Turner’s then-wife, actress/activist Jane Fonda. “This is all true, how do you make this up, right?”

Carter took in the bizarre sight of the mostly unknown comedian. Carrot Top’s orange fro, the biggest it had ever been, reached into the early morning sky. He was wearing polka-dot pajamas as he struggled to yoink his flower-spangled prop trunks from the back of the jeep. Could Turner please move so Carrot Top could pull them out? The billionaire sped off so fast that the comic’s hair blew back.

“Do you need any help with the luggage there, son?” asked Carter. 

“No, Mr. President,” said Carrot Top, boggling at the fact that Carter was chatting him up curbside. “I’m fine.”

“What are you doing in Bozeman?” Carter wondered.

Carrot Top said that he was a real estate agent, a line Carter bought before Carrot Top revealed he was joking. “I’m a comedian,” he admitted. “I’m just being stupid.”

“You look like a comedian!” exclaimed the President. “Is that all your gadgets?”

Carrot Top and Carter shot the breeze for 10 minutes before the Secret Service noticed that Carter wasn’t where he was supposed to be. “Get away from him!” agents commanded as they approached the orange-tinged comedian. 

“No, he’s good,” Carter told the agents. “He’s a young, up-and-coming comic!”

Carrot Top made his way into the airport with his trunks, at one point allowing Carter and his wife to cut ahead of him during check-in. Everyone was on the same flight, and Carrot Top insists he’ll never forget what happened next. Carter “went up and down the plane and shook everyone’s hand,” the comic remembered. “He was the sweetest. He wasn’t running for president. He wasn’t running for anything.”

Carrot Top’s memories of Turner weren’t as fond, recalling a time when he had a successful show on one of Turner’s networks. The comic introduced himself, and Turner had no idea who he was.

But the guy Turner dropped off at the airport? “Jimmy Carter couldn’t have been nicer.”